My novel, The Flood, is set in 2,700 B.C., in the Sumerian city-state of Uruk. I wanted to focus on the stage of urban development in which cities, aided by the invention of writing, start producing new technology and culture at an accelerated rate. New professions emerge, trade flourishes, and conflicts intensify. In other words, the complex, multi-layered, urban society of humans is born.
For hundreds of thousands of years there were no kings. A single person did not rule over large numbers of other people. Instead, humans roamed the Earth in small, relatively egalitarian bands. Then something happened. Humans began settling down. Over time, some of these settlements grew into the world’s first cities. Most of these early cities lined large rivers that regularly flooded their banks. Why? Because, among other reasons, this flooding created fertile soil. But for this soil to be tilled, levees and canals had to be built to control the floodwater. Such construction required a leader that could effectively coordinate large groups of people. Leaders that succeeded in building structures that brought water onto the fields at the right time could distribute the resulting harvest to their followers (and presumably attracted even more followers). Thus arose two new features of humanity: large numbers of people living in one place and a ruler who asserted control over large numbers of people.
The earliest rulers were religious in nature: priest-kings who controlled their growing cities through a central temple. It’s easy to imagine why. A large temple surrounded by lush green fields must have seemed miraculous to the primitive nomads still roaming the hinterlands. In ancient Sumer (the civilization that first emerged in present-day Iraq), cities were built around towering ziggurats, large stepped pyramids that could be seen for many miles across the flat floodplain. These temples housed increasingly complex operations: grain storage, pottery production, and the provision of offerings to the gods. To keep track of all this activity, a new invention emerged in the Sumerian city of Uruk around 3,400 B.C.: writing.
At first, writing consisted of simple signs that were economic in nature (three-sheep-temple-Inanna meaning “three sheep are stored in the temple of Inanna”). Over time, some symbols came to represent sounds and these sounds could be put together to make words. The priests-kings of Sumer used this new invention to consolidate control over their respective cities. But writing soon found other applications. By 3,000 B.C. long distance trade routes crisscrossed the Middle East. Written agreements documented how raw materials (e.g., metal and wood) flowed into cities and finished goods (e.g., pottery and cloth) flowed out of cities and spread across the hinterland. Urban artisans soon had materials from around the world in their workshops and could experiment with new alloys and compounds. One of these alloys, bronze, a mixture of cooper and tin, proved incredibly durable and led to new rapid advances. Artisans fashioned new tools, and an emerging profession, the solider, fashioned new weapons.
For many centuries, the city-states of ancient Sumer were independent entities. However, as they grew in size and complexity, competition for resources intensified. The proliferation of bronze weapons coincided with an increase in armed conflict, and another feature of humanity arose: war.
My book is focused on this era of growing complexity. An era in which a city’s survival required more than just grain from its fields and clay from its riverbeds. A city needed metal from the mountains and wood from the forests. It needed soldiers and trade routes and allies. These tasks could not be completed by the temple alone. The priest-kings of old were now forced to reckon with other emerging professions: the trader, the scribe, and the soldier; each of them set on growing their power. My novel looks at this dynamic through the lens of a mystery: which of these actors caused a flood that destroys half of the city.
Greg DiBiase is an American lawyer and writer. He is the author of new novel, The Flood.
